Quotes from Steve Martin

Any type of humor can be transferred to the screen, as long as there's clarity. The audience wants to know just what they're supposed to be feeling, when they're supposed to laugh.

Thankfully, perseverance is a good substitute for talent.

First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.

I was not naturally talented. I didn't sing, dance or act, though working around that minor detail made me inventive.

There's someone out there for everyone - even if you need a pickaxe, a compass, and night goggles to find them.

I'm tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.

I never thought much about success early on. I only thought about being a comedian - or just being in show business, is really more accurate.

Most comedies are really hard to write, or to watch, because you kind of generally know what's coming.

Comedy may be big business but it isn't pretty.

Relationships end, but they don't end your life. But people do often spending more time finding out about failed relationships than finding successful ones.

Relationships end, but they don't end your life.

Nothing I do is done by popular demand.

Don't have sex man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to start talking to them.

Whether I'm involved in creating something or not, it's a personal issue of do I respect it. But you can only know that five or ten years later.

Knowledge of means without knowledge of ends is animal training.

A joke that works is complete knowledge in a nanosecond.

The bluegrass community... can be very strict. I didn't know if I'd be welcomed into the bluegrass community or not, but I think they judge you very fairly... I felt really welcome.

I first thought maybe I'd do a banjo presentation record, where I'd play a couple of songs and get a bunch of other players to do the rest. Then I realized I had enough of my own songs to do an album of them.

The banjo is such a happy instrument--you can't play a sad song on the banjo - it always comes out so cheerful.

Be so good they can't ignore you.

I have found that-- just as in real life--imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.

Everything is fraught with danger. I love technology and I love science. It's just always all in the way you use it. So there's no - you can't really blame anything on the technology. It's just the way people use it, and it always has been.

Movies always are open to being remade because times change so much, and the tempo of movies changes. I think of it like a James Bond. They can have different actors play the same role... I've had people come up to me and say, 'We want to remake 'The Jerk' with so and so.' And I say, 'Fine.' It just doesn't bother me. It's an honor actually.

You can't really conduct your life by one or two phrases.